The New York Yankees SUCK and Other Revelations

marvelousmarvbackbiter at The Daily Growler "Sports" Desk
The Yanks are sunk early this year--they've been flushed down the AL East toilet already--hell they're lower than Toronto now--yet, irony at its best, they are still playing over .500. Last year, Joe Torre, the greatest manager in baseball, had the Yanks 24 games over .500--and this time of year last year, the Yankees were still in contention with the Red Sox for first place. Then Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman saddled Joe not with a top-notch pitcher, which is what he needed, but with Rajah Clemens--Brian Cashman jumping like a little kid with such pompous excitement--Yahoo! OK, come on, Rajah was once the greatest pitcher in the Majors after Nolan Ryan retired--and he won more Cy Youngs than any other pitcher even Cy Young--but when Little Boy Brian brought Rajah out of retirement for the umpteenth time, he tried, yes he tried, but, hell, he was beat up, old, mid-forties, but he tried, and he pitched some immortal-type innings and won some surprising games and beat the Red Sox in a real thriller--but steroids or no steroids, Rajah just couldn't keep up under the pressure--and then Little Boy Brian saddled Joe with some Single A minor league wunderkind--they were said by Brian to be showing ML ability by overwhelming Single A batters, so up come these minor league wonders--I can't even remember their names now, ladies and gentlemen--and poor Joe Torre, he knows baseball well enough to know you can overwhelm Single A minor league batters all the hell you want but it ain't the same as facing a guy like A-Rod or Manny Ramirez or Luis Pujols, guys like that--and the first one of these wonderspunks broke his god-damn leg and was gone just when Joe needed him; then the next one pitched and got the shit knocked out of him--the only one Joe saw any promise in was Jabo Chamberlain--a young punk who could throw a ball 100 mph and had pretty good control, though his arm had never been tested at the ML level so Joe tried Jabo out in middle-inning relief and he did phenomenally until the big leaguers figured him out--but Jabo gave relief especially to old has-beens like Andy Petitte and Mike "Even Steven" Mussina--I mean look at what pros Brian Cashman saddled Joe with, too--I mean Carl "Always Injured" Posano--or El Duque for the hundredth time--and Joe, in spite of these handicaps, got the Yankees to the playoffs, almost won the division over Boston who went on to win the World Series, and lost in the playoffs in Cleveland especially after Jabo "Baby" Chamberlain let a bunch of gnats get his goat--and Joe like the great manager he is took the blame for the gnat incident--yes, he should have stopped the game until the gnats were driven off the field--instead he put his faith in Jawbone and Jawbone blew the game--and then Mariano Rivera let Joe down a couple of times, like giving up home runs in the ninth inning twice! And then George Steinbrenner has to shoot his big ignorant ass off and tell Joe either he wins the playoffs or he can look for another job--and the gnats got to a minor-league-at-best pitcher and Joe was blamed for it and Joe was sent packing. Steinbrenner further insulted Joe by not firing him but cutting his salary instead. What a stupid motherfucking move! They don't cut the salaries of those millionaire playboy players when they don't come through--like A-Rod this year! Instead of sticking behind Joe, A-Rod turned turncoat and stuck his nose up old Alzheimer George's nasty buttcrack and sucked up hard enough to get a 10-year contract and more money than all the gods and he rewards George with a so-so season in which his stardom blessed himself but not the Yankees--as a result of George Steinbrenner's and Brian Cashman's total ignorance of the game of baseball the Yankees now suck big time--they let the best manager in baseball get away in favor of a minor-league manager at best--and speaking of Joe Torre being the best manager in baseball, THE L.A. DODGERS ARE 3 GAMES AHEAD OF THE DIAMONDBACKS in first place in their division--finally playing over .500--and Manny Ramirez is finally with Joe now--and, I hate to say it, but I watched the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks play last weekend and I was so reminded of the Joe Torre Yankees, I mean these guys were waiting out pitches--just like the great Yankees did under Joe--like Tino Martinez and Posada and Jeter and Gary Sheffield and Bernie Williams used to do--and Bernie Williams was always up among the leader batters as were Jeter and Sheffield and Tino--and last year Posada--and that's what the Dodgers were doing and Tim McCarver and the other announcer made note of it and finally Tim said that it was Joe Torre-style Billy Ball--wait for your pitch, then pick the place you need to hit the ball--or if it's in your homer zone then you knock its sox off--you punch out your hits like Jeter learned to do under Joe.

But now, you know what? I don't like the Yankees any more. I'm a Yankee fan of 30 years--I'm a New Yorker of the Yankee ilk when it comes to baseball through and through--an American Leaguer no matter they have the designated hitter shit--but for the first time in my life, I caught myself rooting against the Yankees this year--and I went to a couple of games and listened to John Sterling on the radio once or twice, but not like last year and the year before that when I listened or went to every god-damn game--giving up sex on occasions to listen to the Yankees--and the last two years were a couple of the most exciting years I've ever spent enjoying this truly American game--an American game of American Dream dimensions even--diamond-shaped--diamonds come from coal, and a lot of the early pro baseball players were coal miners's kids and miners themselves or dumbass farmhands and millhands, working stiffs, the earliest Major League teams sporting Native Americans and blacks and Cubans and guys with three fingers (Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown) and later a guy with one leg (Monty Stratton) and a guy with one arm (the great Pete Gray) and a guy with what was said to have been the ugliest mug in the world (Don Mossi)--60 feet from base to base--and 60 feet is just enough length to give the runner a chance to out run a throw from any of the infield positions, but short enough that it gave the infielder an equal chance at getting all but the speediest of runners out from even deep in the hole.

Then I found out that the Feds are investigating the shenanigans that went on between New York City wheeler and dealers and fat-cat George "Alzheimer's Gotcha!" Steinbrenner in the city subsidizing the building of the new Yankee Stadium--originally said to cost 800 million but now up to, listen to this, 2.1 billion dollars--the most expensive ever baseball stadium ever built in the world. And the skulduggery? The City reevaluated the land the new Yankee Stadium is being built on (the old Yankee Stadium is on city property, too--the City had a chance to buy the Yankees when George Steinbrenner bought them for around 60 million bucks--the Yankees are now worth billions!) and in doing so they inflated the value of that land--by doing this, an illegal move and why the deal is being investigated, the Yankees were able to sell tax-free bonds to investors in the stadium thus allowing the Yankees to pay off the cost overruns--overruns due to the expensive building materials needed to build the executive and corporate luxury boxes and suites--like turning Yankee Stadium into a rich man's shopping mall with an ML baseball park in it--and those building materials have skyrocketed lately and the cost of building this unnecessary stadium--the House that Ruth Built is still a sound stadium--a beautiful stadium, too--though it was totally rebuilt by New York City tax money during the Mike Burke-CBS ownership of the team--in rebuilding the stadium they did preserve the sacred earth around home plate though the rest of the stadium was totally dug up and restructured--not much of the original House that Ruth Built was left--still, it ain't that old a structure--and they're just going to demolish it and sell it for scrap--for this new boondoggle stadium! Fuck, George Steinbrenner, and Boy Hank, and Baby Boy Brian Cashman--they've ruined the Yankees--turned them into a second-division club--a second-division club with a beer salesman for a manager and a bunch of growing-old millionaires as its stars, stars who may or may not live up to their legends next year--like Jason Giambi has had a total has-been year; and Johnny Damon--fuck him, sell him quick; and Andy Petitte and Mike Mussina have finally sputtered out--their careers no longer of star quality--and the Yanks have got one of the most fucked up misjudged pitching staffs going--and so stupid was Brian Cashman and Hankie Steinbrenner that they hired the wunderkind's minor league pitching coach to take Ron Guidry's place when they axed Joe! That gives the Yankees a minor-league pitching staff--it beat them last year and it has sunk them this year, too.

marvelousmarvbackbiter

The House That George Is Building--World's Most Expensive Sports Stadium
_____________________________________________________

From thedailygrowlerhousepianist "John McCain's Voice Mail"

www.236.com/blog/w/lee_camp/mccains_voice_mail_to_palin_le_8644.php

From thegrowlingwolf : I never heard of this guy until I met him through Chet Flippo's book: Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting--I find him interesting--here's an interview with him:

www.booksmith.com/reader/carroll.html

___________________________________________
Jane Eyre, No Longer a Virgin
Bye the bye, I finished reading Jane Eyre--I started to throw it in the garbage, but I love books too much, even bad books--and Jane Eyre is now of a time past and hopefully has been dropped as a requirement for reading by our up and coming young readers--especially young girl readers--better you gals should read Isabel Allende's City of the Beasts. But then I'm an Anglophobe, you know--and Charlotte Bronte is just too English village/parsonage-raised/quaking with sexual desires for me--just too old-timey for my girlish tastes. I suppose at the time it was written it was daring--I guess sexed up young girls could read a lot of feminine sexuality into it--and I'm sure the men and boys of the day got off on some of Charlotte's narrative insinuations--like her superman, the worthless Rochester, who after he tells her he wants to marry her and he gives her a treasured book from his own library, Sir Wally Scott's book of poems, Marmion, to read as she awaits his pounding her in their nuptial-night bed--the wedding that was taking place when the worthless Rochester was revealed as a bigamist--and before that wedding while our virgin reads Marmion, Jane sees the worthless Rochester as a stallion rearing up--its big hard horse dick visible as he rears up to full height in the moonlight of her sexual thirsting, I'll sarcastically assume. There is, don't you think, sexual implication in a virgin (Sweet Jane Eyre--who seems to underlyingly constantly have sex on her mind) almost marrying a bigamist?

Here are some notes I took while screaming toward the finish line in my race to read Jane Eyre--I was in a neck-and-neck race with boredom about half way through the book:

From JE:

Charlotte describing a day: "It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds...." One of the only books Jane read as a waif was The Birds of England.

"The moth roamed away."

On page 258, Charlotte mentions an "automaton."

On page 350, Charlotte mimics the local English country peasant way of speaking: "Nay, I dunnut want ye to do nought."

Charlotte uses "mucky it" for "dirty it" and "girt" for "great."

"...and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple." (Page 262.)

Charlotte mentions "blither birds."

After Young Virginal Jane finds out her superman, the worthless Rochester, is a bigamist, she denies him kisses and feeling her up--she admits when he started kissing her back a few pages he also took a little liberty with his hands--and tells him, "...I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket, a jay in borrowed plumes."

When the worthless Rochester offers Sweet Jane half his estate--for his being a bigamist and ruining her wedding plans, Jane replies, "Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you think I am a Jew-userer, seeking good investment in land?" (Page 267.) (King Ahasuerus is the Persian King in the biblical book of Esther; King Ahasuerus had Jewish advisors in his court.)

"I'm glittering like a parterre."

"No sooner had twilight, that hour of romance...."

Jane speaking about herself if she had to change to satisfy a man: "I would not exchange this little English girl for the Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle eyed, houri forms and all."

Jane plays the piano (on Page 277). She's so bad, the worthless Rochester shoves her off the bench and takes it over himself. Of course, he's a master pianist. He's Jane's superman.

Jane tells her friend what she told the worthless Rochester when he tried to take liberties with her before they were married: "I assured him I was naturally hard--very flinty, and that he would often find me so...." Old Rochester was ready to bang Jane in front of his roaring fireplace soon after he proposed to her, but she resisted.

Charlotte uses the word "inanition"--and later writes about the "upas-tree."

Jane makes a North American statement: "...such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe." Had she been reading Longfellow? James Finamore Cooper?

A Reverend with whom Jane is residing (he's a long lost cousin) wants to marry her and take her to India with him as a missionary wife, which she refuses, saying she would go with him as a friend but would not marry him--saying that his marrying her is like "hiring a mistress" to her and "Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave; both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior; and to live with inferiors is degrading." (Page 319.)

Charlotte's usage: "...had struck one into syncope...." "...it was the visionary bride, who had melted in air...." "...the moral degredation, blent with the physical suffering...." "...look at the avidity in her eyes...."

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler